After Stimulus Package, Pentagon Officials Are Preparing to Pare Back

WASHINGTON — Having signed into law nearly $800 billion in new spending, President Obama will now be under pressure to identify at least some budget cuts — and the Pentagon may be particularly vulnerable.

Mr. Obama is set to release his first budget proposal on Feb. 26. After years in which military budgets have soared to record levels, Pentagon officials are already preparing at a minimum to pare back, with a particular eye to slashing weapons programs that have suffered significant cost overruns.

Some Democrats are pressing for much broader cuts in military spending, with Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the Democratic chairman of the Financial Services Committee, having called for a 25 percent reduction in the Pentagon budget.

While such a drastic reduction is unlikely during a time of two wars and a recession, several high-dollar, high-tech weapons systems will be under the most scrutiny.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has acknowledged that the Pentagon “faces difficult choices among competing priorities,” and said the programs most liable for cuts are those “with serious execution issues.” Those he cited as having been particularly problematic included the Air Force tanker and Joint Strike Fighter, a new search-and-rescue helicopter, the fleet of replacement helicopters for the president, the tilt-rotor Osprey troop transport, the Army’s program for future combat systems and the Navy’s littoral combat ship.

“One thing we have known for many months is the spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing,” Mr. Gates said in Congressional testimony.

Mr. Gates made clear that he did not intend to force each of the armed services to share equally in any budget cuts, which would be a departure from Pentagon practice. “We must have the courage to make hard choices,” he said.

Personnel costs account for about two-thirds of all Pentagon and military spending, but there is little chance that money budgeted for salaries, training, health care and other benefits for military personnel and their families would be slashed while troops are fighting and dying in two wars.

Photo

One thing we have known for many months is the
spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing.
Defense Secretary Robert M. GatesCredit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

“At the core of our future success is our people,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this month at Fort Drum, N.Y. He said any budget cuts should first look to trimming programs “where costs have spun out of control.”

Mr. Gates convened a session last Friday with Admiral Mullen, all of the regional war-fighting commanders and the armed services chiefs and secretaries to focus specifically on budget priorities and financial challenges.

Among those opposed to cuts, military industry lobbyists and members of Congress are likely to question whether cutbacks in arms purchases, with the threat of shutting down production lines, would be the proper response to an economic crisis already marked by deep job losses. Reading the Obama administration’s initial proposals for military spending will be tricky.

Even if overall spending is reduced, the official Defense Department budget may actually grow over last year’s spending plan, because billions of dollars in emergency spending that now passes through Congress in separate legislation is to be rolled back into the regular budget.

The Pentagon’s base budget request for 2009 was $515 billion ($513 billion was approved). Further, a separate bridge fund of $66 billion was approved to pay for the wars in 2009, and it has been expected that the Pentagon may offer another emergency spending bill of up to $70 billion for this year.

Mr. Obama has promised to impose greater controls on government expenses not only for the military but for domestic programs, including the popular but increasingly costly entitlement programs, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

On Monday at the White House, the president will convene what he has called a “fiscal responsibility summit” with budget experts and members of both parties in Congress to discuss potential savings initiatives. The panels will include one that focuses on problems with military procurement. The summit will be followed Tuesday by Mr. Obama’s televised address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol. While not officially a State of the Union address, the speech is routine for a new president and focuses on the initial budget.

Two days later, on Feb. 26, Mr. Obama plans to release his budget outline for fiscal 2010, which begins Oct. 1. The blueprint will also have 10-year projections of spending and revenues, through fiscal 2019.

That will provide the first clues about Mr. Obama’s long-range plans for national security, health care, energy and climate, education and taxes — and for how those plans will square with his promised deficit-reduction at a time when annual deficits are exceeding $1 trillion.

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: After Stimulus Package, Pentagon Officials Are Preparing to Pare Back. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe